Steelers spill blood in pursuit of victory

Nottingham Panthers 1Sheffield Steelers 2

Steelers travelled south to Nottingham and recorded their second win of the season against the Panthers in front of a near-sold-out Nottingham Ice Centre

After the game Steelers coach Dave Matsos said: "I'm delighted with the win. We were patient and eventually our game plan paid off."

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Ryan Finnerty's hit on Corey Neilson, 10 seconds into the game, set the tone for what was, for the majority of the 60 minutes, a frenetically-paced encounter between the two bitter rivals.

Steelers managed to close out nearly five minutes of continuous Panthers power play during the first 10 minutes, including over a minute of 5-on-3.

But the good work was undone when the league's leading scorer, Sean McAslan, danced into the Sheffield zone with ease, before going five-hole on Jody Lehman to give Nottingham the lead.

The second period went through15 minutes of relative calm before a perfectly-executed hip check by Mark Thomas on Neilson livened up proceedings.

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Both men crashed to the ice and hit the boards. Unfort-unately for Thomas, Neilson, enraged by the hit, was first to his feet and went about swatting at the Sheffield player until help arrived in the form of goalie Lehman.

Thomas left the ice with a cut face and Neilson left for the penalty box.

Lehman was given a misconduct penalty that was sat by the chicken-impersonating Jeremy Cornish, who earlier in the period had goaded first Nottingham hard man Ryan Shmyr, then the whole of the Panthers bench.

With the game now in full brutality mode, Steelers grabbed an equaliser through Ashley Tait, after erratic home goalie Rastislav Rovnianek dropped the puck in the motion of falling flat on his back; 1-1 and game on.

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Sheffield came out flying in the third period with Doug Sheppard and Jeff Legue coming close to breaking the deadlock. Then came the touch of fortune Steelers' craved.

Neilson accidentally shot the puck out of play in his own end.

With 3.30 left in regulation it was a Sheffield power play.

Out came point men Randy Dagenais and Rod Sarich, who toiled continuously for 90 seconds to set up a game-winning play.

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Finally, Sarich found room to fire a shot on net, with Tait getting the final touch, nudging the puck past Rovnianek.

Cue the celebrations from a sizeable away following as Steelers held out for a 2-1 victory.

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